Cheap Pirate Minis at the Dollar General

I was in the local Dollar General store this morning and noticed a pack of 25 pirate figures for $1.00.  They are the same scale as your standard green army men.  Also, they are called BUCCANEER BRAWLERS, so what is not to like?

Frost Giant Friday - An awesome figure by Shinobitron

Thought I'd switch it up with a figure this time.  By Shinobitron

You got to love the full mug of mead....

Another Pseudo-Miniature: The Leviathan!

My wife picked this up for me at Tuesday Morning (a thrift chain around these parts) for 99 cents.

Behold, the Leviathan!

It even came with its own stat sheet!

I have to admit, I find it kind of funny that this guy is from the "Tales of Glory: Spirit Warriors" line-up.

Here are shots to show the scale:

On guard!

So, eaten any heroes lately?

Cheap Pseudo-Minis at Michael's

I saw these in the "$1 and Up" aisle at Michael's craft store. Apparently these dragons are part of the THE ALIEN FORCE!

UPDATE: I saw these the "5 Below" discount chain as well, but they were for $5.00 (rather pricey for this stuff). Michael's had them for $2.00.

Gaming Deal: Wargods for $10.00

I am not a huge miniature games player, but I do enjoy them from time to time, especially at conventions. I don't like ones that are overly complicated and if it takes a life-time to play a battle, count me out. 

However, one of my favorite miniatures games is Wargods by Crocodile Games.  Combat is relatively fast and furious.  One of the cool aspects of Wargods is that players use counters to pre-plot their squad movement before each turn and then have to stick with it.  It gives the game a more realistic feel and seems to speed up play. You just lay out the counters in the path you plan to move and then go with it.

Right now until 10/23/11, the core Wargods rulebook is on sale for $10.00 (it's normally $30.00): link  I believe the S&H is only $5 or so.  Definitely worth checking out. 

Nice Finds at Michael's

I stopped by Michael's the other day and saw these sitting on a shelf.  They might make great terrain for D&D, miniatures war gaming (the palace in particular looks great for Ambush Alley), and so on.  They were about $7 to $9 a piece.

UPDATE: These things are actually birdhouses. You can also find them on eBay if you search for "unpainted wooden castle."  I can't find them on the Michael's web site.

Nifty Condition Markers

My buddy John had a great idea for DIY condition markers: use those plastic rings from milk jug caps. Simple. Brilliant. Need different colors? Buy different kinds of milk!

My Players are Awesome



Ha freakin' ha.



We had our last session for 2010 last Friday and my players surprised me with a bucket load of Christmas gifts.

• Dungeon Master For Dummies (Smart-asses. Yes, that is the correct title; I'm not sure why it's not Dungeon Mastering for Dummies)
• A LEGO Jester (I use a Red Jester from the Tome of Horrors II as a reoccuring character in the campaign.)
• An Orcus and his followers mini gift pack (an Aspect of Orcus as well as a ton of Orcus priest minis)
• AND Oh-hell-no-you-didn't-fuck-yeah-you-did!:

1 GARGANTUAN ORCUS MINIATURE!



Orcus impresses Snow White and Sleeping Beauty with his "wand."



Why do I love WotC’s Pre-Painted Minis?

Because they’re kid-friendly!

Looking for Miniatures for Your Kids?

… then pick up a Bucket of Dragons!  I already picked this up for my girls, but it will be held in reserve until Christmas.  It looks like this has already been discussed at ENWorld (link).  Since my bucket will remain closed until Christmas morn, here are some shots from that ENWorld thread:

Amazon has it going for $20 or so, but my local Wal-Fart has it for $11.00.  It appears Wal-Fart has some kind of exclusive “How to Train Your Dragon” deal going on (we could only find my daughter’s Astrid costume at Wal-Fart as well), so that would account for the online mark up.  Strangely, you can’t order it from Wal-Fart online though.

Really Cheap Tact-Tiles Substitute

A while back I talked about Tact-Tiles, both the kinds you can buy and do-it-yourself ways to make them.  For my Lazy Homemade Tact-Tiles #2 idea, I suggested buying a very cheap dry erase kit from LTD Commodities. Well, it no longer appears to be available at LTD, but I did pick up a set myself before they pulled it.  I poked around a bit and, man, the kit is hard to find now, but I did find one set on eBay here: link.  So, obviously, right out of the gate, this option now has one strike against it.  I figured I’d go ahead and post my thoughts on this kit as a gaming tool anyhow.  Hopefully someone out there has better Google-Fu than I do and can locate a retailer if they’re interested.

Here is what you get:

The panels are paper-thin, but they are basically big stickers after all.

Each panel is 12 inch x 12 inch and you get 8 panels total.  That is a pretty good sized gaming area.

I put the panels down on my gaming table and they covered a large chunk.

I doodled a bit of a dungeon on them and they worked fairly well.  Understandably, I had to hold down the panel so it wouldn’t move, but it wasn’t a problem.

So here is the skinny:

• If you want a grid, you’ve got some work to do. I know from personal experience,
  
  there really is no way to permanently mark this kind of surface apart from scoring it.  These panels are going to turn into confetti if you score them.  One possibility would be to mount the panels onto sections of poster board and then score them.
• A quick note regarding a grid, keep in mind games like D&D 3.5 and 4e work on a one-inch grid, so you can really just use a tape measure without much trouble (well, I’m assuming that is true for 4e. I haven’t played it).  Savage Worlds operates on this grid too and, despite the emphasis on a battle map in the Savage Worlds rule book, the official demo I played at Origins used a tape measure.
• The panels stay in place reasonably well. I bumped the table a bit to test this and the panels more or less stayed in place.  I’m guessing inadvertent bumps by players might be more problematic. Having not played with the interlocking Tact-Tiles, I’m not sure how much of an advantage they offer.
• The panels were covered with a clear film that came off.  I initially wasn’t certain if this was suppose to happen. I’m still not sure, but the panels were still erasable after I removed the film (although shadowing did increase noticeably).

The Verdict

• You get what you pay for. These panels aren’t as snazzy as the original Tact-Tiles or the current Battlegraph Boards.  However, if you can find a set, this kit is a hell of a lot cheaper, especially if you consider the amount of playing surface you get.  You get 8 panels for a 2 foot by 4 foot playing area. In comparison, the Battlegraph Boards are $7.00 per 12 inch piece and a set of Tact-Tiles will run you several hundred dollars on eBay (no joke, check the ENWorld forums).
• If nothing else, these panels would be handy for those times combat spills off your regular battle mat.

Since I am fine with my homemade battle mat, I didn’t keep the kit for myself.  I hung it up in two sections in our kitchen, thinking it would be fun for my daughters.  They really liked it, but, whoa boy, was it a bad idea.  My girls are six and three and, well, their marker control is still rather suspect.  Suffice it to say, they didn’t always stay on the dry erase area.  Word to the wise, dry erase markers don’t wash off non-dry erase walls…  our kitchen is a bit more colorful now.  I certainly do not recommend the kit for its intended purpose unless you have a wall you probably be ok with your kids drawing on to begin with.

Miniature Terrain and Painting, the Polymythic Way

My good friend Polymythic Steve (not to be confused with Steve the Yuan-ti Party Hound) has  posted an excellent “how-to” series about creating terrain and painting miniatures for miniature wargaming.  Steve shows how he made his terrain and painted his miniatures for Ambush Alley, but this stuff is applicable for any game involving miniatures.  I think the terrain creation is particularly ingenious. 

Give it a look:

• Miniature Wargaming Series- 1 Building the Board
• Miniature Wargaming Series- 2 Making Terrain
• Miniature Wargaming Series- 3 Painting the Insurgents
• Miniature Wargaming Series- 4 Painting the Marines

Arduino Dungeon Puzzle

Thanks for Jay at thecapacity for sharing this one.  This fellow named Frank Hernandez created a light-up dungeon puzzle for his players using Arduino and Hirst Arts molds. 

Give it a look (you can find the project site here: link and pictures on Flickr here: link):

Dungeon Puzzle from CodeSlayer on Vimeo.

Dungeons and Digressions Frugal Homemade Game Table

My father-in-law passed away this week and I'm not much in the mood for posting.  I will return to my Garhelm stuff when the mood strikes me.

In the mean time, Ze Bulette at Dungeons and Digressions has posted a nice, cheap homemade game table.  Check it out: link

StruebCon IV

In mid-May, I attended StruebCon IV, a gaming convention hosted by Polymythic Steve. By "gaming convention," I mean a bunch of dudes taking over his house, playing games non-stop, and drinking his beer (also non-stop). The attendees are members of the StruebSquad, most of which are DC area gamers that Steve has assembled over the years. Others, such as myself, are from PA.

So what is with the “Strueb” stuff? It’s derived from Steve’s name. I should point out that Steve himself named neither the event nor the squad, but rather the group named both after him because he brought both the ‘con and the group together.

The guys do a great job with this. Hans worked up convention badges and DohJoe (of LaserPup fame) had commemorative dice made.

It was a lot of fun, although Chaos learned to ride her bike without training wheels while I was gone. It's not easy knowing I missed that. It wasn't intentional (Mrs. Frost didn't make the attempt without me), but was simply a matter of Chaos trying out a neighbor kid's old, smaller bike and taking off on it.

Anyhow, StruebCon is mainly a board game event, with a smattering of miniature gaming and one RPG event (mine). The board game library amassed by the Squad is damn impressive, so it's a nice chance for a RPG guy like myself to play games I've never heard of before.

The big hits of the convention were:

• Dominion – This is non-collectable card game that is a deck-building game. You have to balance amassing action cards with point cards in order to win in the end. I get the sense it’s the Settlers of Catan of the moment (i.e., it’s the hot game going around).
• Ricochet Robots – A real brain tester of a game. You can play with as many people as you want, as long as they can see the board. Players must mentally find the shortest way to move a pawn to a randomized board location. The concept is amazingly simple. Finding the short path (or any path at all) is amazingly tough.
  
  
• Werewolf – This is a blast of a party game. Players sit around accusing one another of who are the werewolves while the wolves silently execute the others. It’s funny, I completely forgot I had played this before as Mafia until Hans mentioned this alternate name on the way home.
• Battlestar Galactica - I didn’t play this myself (I opted for a game of Puerto Rico and Ambush Alley instead). I don’t know much about other than it’s a cooperative game based on the popular TV show remake and involves one or two Cylon (i.e., traitor) players. From the shouts and rants I heard, it looked like a great game. DohJoe played a Cylon and from all reports played it like a damn master. He used the fact that it was everyone’s first time playing (himself included) to his advantage, using his seeming naivety to throw off suspicion.
• Ambush Alley – I’d been looking forward to playing this game and was happy to finally
  
  
  get a chance to do so. As advertised, it was a down-and-dirty miniatures, modern warfare skirmish with a high body count. I played once as the insurgents and once as the US forces. I lost both times, but enjoyed the hell out it. The rules are a bit sketchy at times, but I’ve grown to see that as a plus. We just settled ambiguity with a die roll and move on (e.g., “I’m not sure that is enough cover or not. Hell, evens it is, odds it is not.”)

I myself ran a Castles & Crusades event and I officially became a C & C Ambassador for the event (well, for this and for GASPCon coming up in the fall). I’ll write more about that particular event in a separate post, but in short, it was some good late night fun and God bless the guys for staying up to play.

StruebCon IV was another rousing success. Many thanks to the Polymythic Steve and Mrs. Polymythic Steve for the beer, the brats, the omelets, and the kick-arse gaming.

Stargazer's Tip for a Cheap Dry Erase Battlemat

Sunglar posted a nice way to get a cheap dry erase battlemat from Costco: Cheap battlemats! The board is pre-gridded, so no need to score it.  I remember seeing this white board at Costco years ago and had the same thought.  Great minds think a like.

(This article might be well-known in the blogosphere, but I wasn't sure, so I figured I'd share.)

Peter Cushing - One of Us

Thanks to Rob for this one.   Be sure to stick around for the blatant sexism at about 1:20.

British Pathe - PETER CUSHING
- Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Modern Warfare on your Tabletop - Ambush Alley

Polymythic Steve (not to be confused with this Steve) has clued me into a pretty sweet miniatures game called Ambush Alley.  Basically, the game is an in-your-face, down and dirty modern skirmish rule set (think "Black Hawk Down" with minis).  You can read more about it at their About Us page.  I haven't played it yet, but I am eager to and will when I visit him next month.

Steve submitted a scenario for Ambush Alley's "To the Last Round" contest.  You can check out his submission ("...Because We Got Intel Saying") and its sweet layout here: link.  You can also see him smack himself in the head with a jump rope here: link.

He created the scenery and painted the minis himself. Here are some of my favorite shots:

Battlegraph Boards (Tact-Tiles) Return from the Grave

I mentioned that Longtooth Studios had stopped producing Battlegraph Boards, their version of Tact-Tiles. Well, according to a recent post on ENworld and at their own Web site, Battlegraph Boards are back in production.

Gaming Deal - Halo Interactive Strategy Game

Toys R Us has the "Halo Interactive Strategy Game" on sale for $7.69: link. The shipping and handling is an estimated $6.60. I noticed this game in a bricks and mortar store the other day and it was $10.00, which is still a good deal. I haven't played the game myself, but the reviews on Amazon are pretty positive: link (they also have a fairly decent price).

Even if the game blows, the scenery and minis are likely worth the price for any sci-fi miniatures game or RPG, such as Star Wars, Necromunda, etc.

I'm not a big sci-fi gamer, but figured I'd share this info anyhow.